TIDE and the social sacred

TIDE was a site- specific installation presented at Royal Park Melbourne in 2017. The practice-led research is designed to expose the intra-action of place, site and affect in a post-colonial Australian context. A suite of interdisciplinary perspectives are engaged in the research with the primary goal of developing artistic practice that produces encounters with inspirited sites, and develops an ethos of enlivening the sacred in emplaced social experience. The research positions site-specific art practice as a form of materialist philosophy concerned with what could be perceived as a revitalisation of the social sacred. In particular, the ‘sanctification’ of social life that consists of a revaluing of the importance of ‘live and emplaced’ intra-action. Creative action in situ can begin to foster deep connections as we share knowledges about each other and place, and in doing so, reawaken the sacred in relation to the deep ecological mesh, the human-non-human community to which we all belong.